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Fall in Love with Ramona this Valentine's Day-Starring the Adobe Chapel!

"One of the first brand name novel-to-screen adaptations and an early California production, [;Ramona]; was one of the most expensive films ever made when released in 1910. Mary Pickford and Henry B. Walthall play a Native American couple who encounter oppression and tragedy. It's the sort of three-hankie stuff that [;director]; D.W. Griffith reveled in."- Movies Silently review

"America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford stars in one of the most romantic love stories of the 19th-century, the spectacular, 1910 silent version of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. And one of the book's key scenes was set in the Old Adobe Chapel.

Set in a post-Mexican-American War Southern California, Ramona chronicles the romance between Ramona, a Spanish orphan from the prestigious Moreno family, and Alessandro, an Indian who appears on her family's ranch one day. They fall deeply in love, yet their desire to wed is denied by Ramona's stepmother, who reacts by exiling Alessandro from her ranch. Meanwhile, Ramona is informed that she also has "Indian blood," which causes her to abandon everything to be with her lover, Alessandro.

The story's sentimental portrayal of Mexican Colonial life contributed to establishing the region's unique cultural identity; the influence of the book and the movie on the culture and image of Southern California was considerable. Coinciding with the arrival of major railroad lines to the region, tourists wanted to see the locations depicted in the national best-selling novel. Old Town San Diego leaped at the opportunity to exploit the story and help bring prosperity back to the community, and Old Town has been a tourist mecca ever since.

While John D. Spreckels owned Old Town's Estudillo House, he dubbed it "Ramona's Marriage Place," but it was actually the nearby Adobe Chapel, which Jackson described in her book, that was the setting for the heroine's wedding.

Come back in time with us and watch this silent movie in the Adobe Chapel with live musical accompaniment by Los Californios, a San Diego-based group specializing in the secular music of 19th-century California.